


a concurring opinion for heliocentricity

by celestialmechanics



Series: evidence in support of the theory of heliocentricity [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: DIRECT mention of Galileo, Gen, M/M, NO atsuhina isn't 2gether yet... just wait, Pining Miya Atsumu, You Have Been Warned, in this house we love and support the miya boys, references to astrophysics, this ended up shorter and goofier than i wanted but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26473297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialmechanics/pseuds/celestialmechanics
Summary: But today, Atsumu is a little sick of it, because Atsumu doesn’t like the crust on his sandwich and Osamu likes his sandwich sliced diagonally, and their mom either forgot about their preferences or just can’t keep up the boundary in her head between her sons, and slowly they’re merging into just one son, and Atsumu’s a little afraid that if there could only be one of them, it would be Osamu.So he goes home, grabs the small child-friendly scissors out of a drawer in his desk before walking into the kitchen. He meets his mother’s eyes, says, “I’m Atsumu,” and chops off the strands of hair that plaster themselves to his forehead. The cut is choppy and hideous and undeniably his. His mother looks angry and scolds him for it, but he wonders if deep down, she’s just relieved.The following morning, when the boys come to the table for breakfast in their identical shirts and say, “Good morning, mother,” in their identical voices, she doesn’t get them mixed up.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu, Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Series: evidence in support of the theory of heliocentricity [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924261
Comments: 12
Kudos: 172





	a concurring opinion for heliocentricity

**Author's Note:**

> so! i decided to make this a series, because I'm bored and I enjoy examining the dynamic between hinata and atsumu and writing about the MSBY core four is too fun to pass up. I'm planning to have at least one more part to this series, so ya!! enjoy!
> 
> can be read on its own if u don't wanna bother with part 1!!

**_binary system:_ ** _a system of two astronomical bodies close enough that their gravitational attraction causes them to orbit each other around a barycenter._

i.

Miya Atsumu is six years old and, until now, has never felt the urge to differentiate himself. 

Atsumu has a twin brother named Osamu, and it’s impossible to tell them apart. Even the boys’ mother can’t tell which is which, and she feels awfully guilty about it because she read that failing to recognize your twins as individuals will give them trouble later in life. Still, Atsumu and Osamu don’t mind it. If anything, they enjoy coming to the table for breakfast, wearing identical outfits with hair parted identically. If they’re really feeling like assholes, they’ll plan to say something at the exact same time, the exact same way, because they get a kick out of their mother’s wide eyes flitting back and forth between the two, panicked, before they laugh and soothe her concerns by telling her which is which.

(They only lie about that sometimes because it’s fun to see how long they can keep it up).

But today, Atsumu is a little sick of it, because Atsumu doesn’t like the crust on his sandwich and Osamu likes his sandwich sliced diagonally, and their mom either forgot about their preferences or just can’t keep up the boundary in her head between her sons, and slowly they’re merging into just one _son,_ and Atsumu’s a little afraid that if there could only be one of them, it would be Osamu. 

So he goes home, grabs the small child-friendly scissors out of a drawer in his desk before walking into the kitchen. He meets his mother’s eyes, says, “I’m Atsumu,” and chops off the strands of hair that plaster themselves to his forehead. The cut is choppy and hideous and undeniably his. His mother looks angry and scolds him for it, but he wonders if deep down, she’s just relieved. 

The following morning, when the boys come to the table for breakfast in their identical shirts and say, “Good morning, mother,” in their identical voices, she doesn’t get them mixed up. 

\---

Miya Atsumu is eight years old, and he’s starting to hate the counselor his mother makes him and Osamu see once a week. 

She’s not bad at the job or anything - she’s obviously a very caring individual who knows how to coax her clients into opening up to her, making them feel safe enough to cut open their own chest and spill their guts onto the hardwood floor of her office. The brown leather couch is supple enough to sink into; the matching throw pillows on either side a reminder: _you’re safe here. Are you afraid of death?_ She’s good at her job, and this is precisely why Atsumu can’t stand her anymore. 

He’s not so great at this whole “self-reflection” thing. He’s aware of the flaws in his character, can see them clear as day like bruises in the mirror, so why the hell does he need to pick at every scabbed-over abrasion? Why does he need to lift the bandaids slapped carelessly over cuts and bruises and “ _character flaws,”_ why does he need to run his finger along the vein that connects the wounds to his heart and track down the source of the pain? What good can come from tracing an epidemic back to patient zero, other than the ability to point fingers?

He doesn’t want to dissect the root of the problem, but she keeps prodding and prodding, like a doctor sticking gloved fingers into a nasty wound. _Is this where it hurts?_

_Yes,_ he wants to scream. _That’s where it hurts._

Osamu and Atsumu see a counselor once a week because their mother doesn’t know how to love things in twos. She’d only planned for one child, the same way she’d go to the store with plans to buy only one box of cereal because she only needs one, but ends up with two anyway because she’d had a coupon and what the hell, why not? It’s not until later that she understands that children aren’t cereal, and you don’t get extra because what the hell, why not. And so Osamu and Atsumu see a counselor once a week because if their mother can’t love them properly, then they should probably learn to love each other.

She asks them about things like identity, things like sharing, things like love. She asks if the twins do everything together, or if they have separate interests; she asks if it hurts when people mix them up and if it hurts worse when people make no effort in distinguishing them at all: always Osamu and Atsumu, always the Miya twins - always a pair, never apart. Atsumu lies because lying is easy, and he’d rather be loved as a boxed-set than not loved at all.

\----

Osamu knows more about outer space than Atsumu (Osamu knows more about practically _everything,_ but he doesn’t tell Atsumu this). For their birthday last year, Osamu was gifted with an astronomer’s encyclopedia; here are some things he’s learned:

Once upon a time, there was a planet called Pluto. Pluto still exists, but it’s not a planet anymore, because it was small and wild and didn’t know that it was the 9th planet from the Sun, and one day, it crossed over Neptune’s orbit because 8th is better than 9th, and was demoted to a dwarf planet for its efforts since even celestial bodies must know their place in their universe. 

Rebellious Pluto never sits still because it has five moons, and one of those moons is named Charon, and it is too big and too proud to revolve around an eternally static Pluto. So instead, Charon offers its hand to Pluto and asks if it wants to dance. The gravitational center between the two isn’t strong enough to force one body to run laps around the other, so they waltz instead.

Osamu knows that Atsumu isn’t great with metaphors and analogies, so he keeps this to himself for now. 

\----

Miya Atsumu is 13 years old, and his first love is volleyball, which sucks because Osamu’s first love is _also_ volleyball. 

They’ve never had a problem with sharing - not a _real_ problem, anyways. Sure, there were the toys and the first shower after practice and the last piece of sashimi at the dinner table - but they rarely bicker over something significant. Volleyball is something significant. 

The good news is that they have numbers on their jerseys, which means mix-ups aren’t as frequent. The good news is that Atsumu could never leave the court, and he’d die a happy man. 

The bad news is that this doesn’t get to belong to him because nothing ever does. 

\----

In their first year of high school, Atsumu decides that he can better than Osamu because he’s hungry for it. He loves his brother, he does - but there’s an itch he can’t satisfy until he’s become the usurper. Everyone hated him in middle school because he was so demanding, so mean, so _much,_ but he doesn’t care because how could any of them ever understand? How could anyone of them know what it’s like to have your shadow continually breathing down your neck, except it’s not your shadow, it’s your reflection, and any moment now he’ll step out of the mirror and into the world, leaving you behind to fix the broken mirror?

So he works, and he works, and he works until his fingers are calloused beyond recognition, until the ball can float to the spiker’s palm and call out to him, _I was made for you._

When he finally becomes a starter, he sneaks a glance at Osamu, prepared to gloat - and Osamu just looks happy for him. Atsumu can’t stand him.

\----

If he thought he could get Atsumu to listen, Osamu would sit him down and explain something to him: 

He’d say that the resentment is typical because Atsumu and Osamu have shared everything, including that first cell split inside their mother’s belly because it decided that two heads were better than one. Twins take care of each other even before they’re born - that neither of them sucked the nutrients from the other, that they each gave one another the room and the resources to grow - that in and of itself is a vow. The resentment is typical because one of them wants too much sunlight for himself and lets the other stand in his shadow so that he might gather some more morning light on his face. It happens when one tries to become the center of gravity, tries to pull the other into orbit, asks that he abandon the waltz, and run laps around him instead. The crux of the two-body problem is that there can’t be a primary gravitational pull between the two: instead, they must act as a binary system, dancing around a barycenter, basking in the sunlight together. Neither of them gets to be the Sun, and they have to be okay with that. 

But because Osamu knows Atsumu well enough to know he wouldn’t get it, he says nothing, and instead thanks whatever god is watching over them for not letting either devour the other in the womb. 

\----

**_heliocentrism:_ ** _the astronomical model in which the earth and planets revolve around the sun at the center of the solar system._

ii.

Miya Atsumu is 17, and he stops trying to become the Sun because he finds it instead. 

Hinata Shouyou is 16, and he’s beautiful. Atsumu tilts his head back. The lights of the arena darken behind Shouyou as he obscures them and becomes a silhouette, backlit by the heavens, suspended in air and in time, his hair an amber halo. Atsumu would probably say something like, _oh, that’s what I was looking for,_ but the ball comes careening towards him, past him, bounces on the linoleum behind him, and all he can manage is a huff of air that could pass for a laugh. _There you are._

He loses in the second round of Nationals in his second year of high school. Still, it doesn’t sting like it should because the death blow was delivered by this solar deity who seemingly crashlanded here on Earth and decided to walk among mortals. Through the net, he stares at the Sun and points a trembling finger at him. “Shouyou-kun, I’m gonna toss to ya one of these days.”

Shouyou looks back at him, a smile ghosting his lips. He wonders if he can see the future because he says it with such finality that it might as well have already happened in this lifetime, might as well be an inevitability because to Shouyou’s ears, it sounds like a promise. 

Miya Atsumu is 17 years old, and he thinks he might die if he never sets the ball to that kid. 

\----

Miya Osamu is 18 years old, and he’s decided to quit volleyball after high school. 

There are other things in life that he’s never had the means to do. Volleyball took up so many hours of the day, talking about volleyball ate up all the words in his mouth, thinking about volleyball sucked up all the air in the room: how could anything else dare to exist in the same realm as volleyball? He tells Atsumu before Nationals, thinking it might make him happy - he’d always wanted something to himself, after all. 

However:

“A fucking onigiri restaurant? You’re quitting to become a fucking chef?”

This is not what Osamu had been expecting. 

They win at Nationals that year. Atsumu will forgive him someday. 

But first:

\----

“Brazil?!?”

Bokuto Koutarou looks up from his phone. He’s sitting on the bench in the Jackals lockerroom, a damp towel draped around his neck catching the beads of water that oozes from his wet hair, drip down his cheek, some escaping down his throat to bury themselves in the cotton of his tee-shirt. “Yeah, man! He wants to do beach for a while before coming back. Isn’t that awesome!?” Shougu clears his throat from across the room, clearly hinting that Bokuto ought to lower his voice. 

Atsumu pinches the bridge of his nose and drags a hand down his face. “Whatever. When is he coming back?”

Bokuto shrugs. “Not sure. A year or two, maybe?”

A humorless chuckle escapes Atsumu’s lips as he thinks of the boy who stood across from him three years ago while Atsumu pointed a trembling finger at him, hurt by defeat but not broken by it, and proclaimed that he’d be his setter one day. The boy who’d smiled back at him, ripping his heart of his chest, before crossing the Pacific and taking Atsumu’s heart with him. 

He hoped to god he’d bring it back. 

\----

Miya Atsumu is 20 years old, and he deserves far more credit for his patience. 

He loves volleyball, even now. He had feared that Osamu’s absence would somehow break his fingers and make him forget how to set, but his fingers haven’t abandoned him. He sends the ball to Bokuto, who celebrates every kill with the vigor of a warrior king. He tosses to Sakusa Kiyoomi, who keeps a bottle of hand sanitizer in his shorts pocket and insists on using it after touching the ball (and after giving high-fives, which hurts Atsumu’s feelings. Just a little). His teammates are lovely to the point where he’d almost call them friends. 

Osamu calls him, sometimes. Atsumu usually answers because lonely people can’t afford to be petty. 

Across the Pacific, Hinata Shouyou does yoga in the morning and bikes up a mountain with pizzas strapped to the back of his bicycle, and it gives him vertigo because the incline feels like the mountains back home. Still, the air in Rio tastes nothing like Miyagi. 

\----

Miya Atsumu is 22 years old when Hinata Shouyou brings his heart back from Rio.

He’s different now. Not much taller, but it’s evident that the sand did something to make his thighs look like tree trunks, that the Sun (the _actual_ Sun) browned his skin and darkened his freckles, and that the weight of a new language on his tongue had made him homesick for something that doesn’t have a name. 

Atsumu, Sakusa, and Bokuto scamper over to where Shouyou is, and he’s home again. 

\----

iii.

Contrary to popular belief, Atsumu never wanted to planets to revolve around him. That’s Osamu spreading rumors again. No, Atsumu only wanted 13 trillion miles between himself and Osamu (this sounds far meaner than he intends it to be, so bear with him). 

Orbital patterns are a tricky thing. People write textbooks on astrophysics and planetary dynamics as if they have a clue, making inferences about the behaviors of stars and their systems that reside in a neighborhood a hundred million lightyears from here, and dare to believe their word is law. Scientists and physicists examine equations and observations and presume that they can dictate how the Sun orchestrates its planets, fools that they are. 

As if Pluto didn’t get sick of Neptune’s shit and cut her in line. _Look whose 8th from the Sun, now?_

Orbital patterns are a tricky thing, which is why Atsumu never tried to apply the laws of physics to anything in his life. Sometimes Osamu shone brighter than Atsumu. Sometimes Atsumu demanded the spotlight linger for a moment more so that he could feel the light warm his cheeks and know that something belongs to him. 

Hinata Shouyou walks into the Black Jackals’ second gym. Atsumu feels a pang of sorrow for Galileo, who defended the notion that the Sun sits at the solar system’s center until he drew his final breath. Yes, the Earth follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun, completes its journey every 365 days, and none of that means a single thing to Atsumu because the Sun in the sky is not his. 

\----

Miya Osamu is 17, and he wants the gym floor to open up and swallow him whole.

“Come on, Samu, can I toss ya just one more?”

And Osamu really looks at his brother for the first time in a long time and wishes that the counselor their mother had made them see once a week when they were eight years old had shaken Atsumu’s shoulders hard enough to rattle his brain in his head until it clicked for him that he doesn’t have to love everything to the point of destruction. He wishes his mother had been able to love things in twos, that she hadn’t watched Atsumu’s jump serve and cheered for Osamu by accident, that Hinata Shouyou hadn’t jumped high enough to grow a pair of angel’s wings and steal the breath from his brother’s lungs. 

Osamu does not want one more toss, and Atsumu knows this. Osamu jumps anyway. 

\---

Miya Atsumu is 23, and he wishes the Sun would explode already.

Another thing that the physicists have done is project that in 10 billion years, our Sun will grow and swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, before fizzling out entirely a few billion years later, leaving whoever remains to freeze to death in darkness on Pluto. Sometimes, people lament this fact, as if its something they have to be concerned about. Atsumu isn’t worried at all because he has cast aside the Sun in the sky. The Earth may continue to sprint laps around the Sun, but Atsumu has found god in Hinata Shouyou, who hasn’t yet caught onto the fact that Atsumu is in love with him. 

Shouyou hits every toss with a sort of reverence, like the ball was sent with god’s good graces, and it’s a blessing just to caress the thing in his palm. Atsumuno longer asks if he’s allowed to toss Shouyou one more because Shouyou meets his eyes after each successful spike, and he knows he doesn’t need to ask. Shouyou meets him halfway, always. 

Shouyou comments one evening when they’ve stayed late to practice (again): “You know,” he says to Atsumu, “I think you’re the first person who ever asked me to spike for them first. It’s usually the other way around. Actually, it’s more like I would have to beg for someone to toss the ball for me. I don’t think anyone ever offered.” 

Had Shouyou listened a little closer, he might’ve heard the debris from Atsumu’s heart rattle around his ribcage. He’s lying on the floor, sweat-slicked hair falling into his eyes, and can only stare glassy-eyed at the god/boy/man/sunbeam standing over him. He takes a shaky breath and says, “That doesn’t surprise me. Most people are far too stupid to recognize a miracle when they see one. I mean, really, what kind of a sane person wouldn’t want to toss to ya?” Shouyou’s eyes widen a fraction. “And yes, that includes Tobio-kun. He was already an insane person in my book, but him never offering to toss to ya first? Seals the deal.”

Shouyou is silent, but not the bad type of silent. This silence is reverent, almost holy. Maybe they’ll talk about the silence someday, but not yet. “Can I toss ya a few more, Shouyou-kun?”

  
  


It’s not fair to compare to Osamu, so he doesn’t. He only tosses the ball once more and wonders how Galileo knew all those centuries ago that heliocentricity was not a theory but a destiny. 

\----

Sakusa Kiyoomi is 23, and he, too, wishes the Sun would explode already. 

“This is disgusting.”

Bokuto scoffs, offended on behalf of Shouyou and Atsumu. “It is not! It’s cute.” Golden eyes wander to where Atsumu stands with Shouyou, helplessly drinking in every word that comes out of the man’s mouth, as though if he looks away for even a moment, Shouyou might disappear. 

Sakusa bristles. He’s been patient, hell, he’s almost been _kind_ to Atsumu for the past month and a half because he pitied the man. But his grace period is nearing its end because Atsumu is still motionless and starry-eyed, his obsession and infatuation clear as day to everyone other than Shouyou, and Sakusa wants to rip his hair out. “It is absolutely _not_ cute. He’s going to drool any minute now, and when he does, I’m gonna go apeshit.”

Bokuto begins to laugh right when a bit of spittle dribbles out of the corner of Atsumu’s mouth. He’s quick to wipe at it, eyes already flying to Sakusa in alarm.

Sakusa does, in fact, go apeshit. 

**Author's Note:**

> part 3 is just going to be feral sakusa, sorry I don't make the rules


End file.
